


Slow Motion

by bexacaust



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: M/M, mild robogore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 08:02:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6974581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bexacaust/pseuds/bexacaust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If I could save time in a bottle<br/>The first thing that I’d like to do<br/>Is to save every day till eternity passes away<br/>Just to spend them with you</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow Motion

Drift never understood why mechs would claim battle would move in slow motion. It has always been the same to him, too fast to follow, to quick to mourn. He’d lost many, many he fondly remembered… and many he didn’t want to think about.

But this time would be different.

There was something ominous in the way Perceptor laughed with him. Something dangerous in the way the sun rose red on this planet, there was something dark in the very air.

“Hey, Percy; drinks on me after, yeah?”

“Well if you’re buying, why not?”, laughed the sniper.

It was supposed to be just a generic patrol. A walk around the block as the ship docked and they took on supplies. 

Nothing bad was supposed to happen, under that red sun and heavy sky.

And then Magnus sounded the alarm. And then there was gunfire. There were screams of mechs dying, of plating tearing. Rodimus was down, shepherding his men back, and the advancing forces were moving, and before anyone could stop them-

Perceptor and Whirl charged out; Whirl giving a howl of “WRECK AN’ RULE!” and Rodimus screaming for them to fall back, fall back, fall…

And one would fall.

Perceptor grabbed Rodimus’s arm, hauled him up to his feet and shoved him forward, snarling for him to go, to run, to get to Whirl and get to safety. Magnus charged out as the whirling dervish of the Lost Light covered his Captain; and they all heard it.

“ONE WRECKER DOWN, FEW MORE T’GO!”

Drift turned from his place on the loading dock; he felt a million miles away and right up close all at once as he watched Perceptor stand straight and frozen and shocked. The ex-Wrecker stumbled, walking a step forward, then two.

Ratchet howled a “NO!”

Drift’s intake dried up. Even from here, he could see the sloshing fluid behind Perceptor’s chestplate, saw smoke curling from his lover’s back.

Like slow motion, Perceptor fell to one knee, caughed neon death… and toppled to the side.

And then Drift was casting aside his swords and snatching a rifle from his comrades; and faces were blurring and the world was turning and there was once more the hail of gunfire. His frame vibrated from recoil, a strut in his arm cracked and someone was snarling and howling and calling for Perceptor to get to his feet, to come home.

Drift realized it was him only when the enemy was strewn across the battlefield like broken toys in a hurricane. 

The click of a useless weapon and it was cast aside as Drift stumbled to Perceptor, voice rasped from battlefield mourning; the speedster dropped beside the scientist, pulled him to roll onto his back and leaking life poured from the burnt remains of a gaping hole in Perceptor’s back.

“P-Percy?”

The sniper looked up at Drift, and his optics flickered.

“I don’t-”, the scientist’s voice gurgled, his systems mangled beyond saving, “I don’t th-ink I’ll be j-joining y-ou… at Swerv-ves, love.”

“…I know, Percy.”

“The sunkssshtzztri-ise is love-ly, at le-ast.”

“Yeah, yeah it is.”

“Not as love-ly as y-ou.”

Drift barked a wry, bitter laugh. He knelt by Perceptor, pulling the sniper to rest against thighplating. Drift stroked over a dark helm, leaning farther and kising Perceptor’s forehead.

He knew the crew watched from behind, he didn’t care.

“Th-irty kliks, eh?”

Drift nodded, optics feeling heavy and damp.

“I m-made it three minutes. N-ew record.”

Drift nodded again.

Perceptor’s optic scope whirred, chirruped, and went dim in shutdown.

“Drift?”

“Yeah, Percy?”

“I wish I had loved you as much as you deserved.”

Drift’s spark stuttered in its pulse as Perceptor smiled then, an honest smile; the grin of a quiet scientist in Trion’s lab quarters.

“But… I’m glad I got to love you at all.”

Smiling like a new year’s dawn, Perceptor’s good optic sparked… and went dim. Grey crept faster over red and teal, silver and black. Drift let his own helm tilt back and let off a keening wail. Magnus hung his helm, a hand over his mouth as he turned away, quietly shooing the surviving crew back into the ship. Rodimus scrubbed an arm over his optics, and even Whirl was silent.

Perceptor, cold and sarcastic Perceptor, motormouth extraordinaire… was gone.

It was Ratchet who went to fetch them both, his own intakes run dry as his processor played back a thousand memories of the snarky scientist from before war had changed him.

It was Brainstorm who followed, wings quivering and optic lost.

And it was Drift who looked up at them, pain in his expression as he clutched onto a cold body; a lover once more lost

“Ratch-”

“I know, Drift.”, whispered the medic, leaning down to gather the cold corpse, “He won’t rest here. We’ll send him off right.”

The funerary procession, the trail to Calvary, set out once again for the ship as the sun rose to high noon. And clutched desperately in sword calloused servos-

A bright blue reticule with the crosshair scuffed.


End file.
